The story revolves around Anna (Naomi Watts), a midwife at a London hospital, who discovers a diary belonging to a teenage girl who died during childbirth. Her efforts to translate the diary and thus find a family for the girl's baby end up embroiling her with a powerful figure in the Russian Mafia and the human trafficking and prostitution trade.

This film contains examples of:

Abusive Parents: Semyon makes no big secret of his disdain for his son and also kicks and beats him.

Ambiguously Gay: While the movie produces more Ho Yay that you could shake a stick at, Kirill is never explicitly shown to be gay. A mobster lets loose a rumour that he might be gay but right before that we get a scene of him in his father's brothel and he seems to be enjoying himself by all accounts. But then just before he freaks out and demands Nikolai sleep with a prostitute...while he watches. Can we say 'projection?'

As You Know: There are a couple of times when things in the Mafia's world are explained to either Nikolai or Anna. There's also the time when the senior officer spells out in great detail to any audience members who haven't got it yet that Nikolai is undercover, but since he does it in a tone that suggests he's quoting his own officially-worded orders, he gets away with it.

Badass: Nikolai. Notable badassery includes the bathhouse scene and joining the vory v zakone as an infiltrator. By the end of the film he's become Kirill's second-in-command. The Chechen brother who pulled a knife out of his own chest to keep attacking also deserves a mention.

Enigmatic Minion: Nikolai is very difficult to read, and the camera spends a lot of time focussed on his face, after or during various events, as if inviting the audience to try and decipher what he's thinking.

Eye Scream: Nikolai stabs one of his attackers in the eye, thus ending the fight.

Faking the Dead: Semyon orders Nikolai to take care of Stepan. When Nikolai follows him home and Stepan goes missing, everyone starts assuming Nikolai killed him. Nikolai — being the Reverse Mole — really just sent him to Edinburgh.

Fan Disservice: In classic David Cronenberg fashion, Nikolai's sex with the prostitute is intentionally made as unappealing as possible, with Kirill watching.

Not to mention that Nikolai's much-discussed nude scene happens during a brutal knife fight.

Gray Eyes: Nikolei is a textbook case of the "cold, strong-willed and unapproachable" variety. The discovery that he's undercover and has probably done a lot more If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten acts than we see on-screen also fits the "ideas above people" mentality aspect of the trope.

Hitman with a Heart: Nikolai seems to be one. It turns out he's actually undercover, and it's unclear whether he has ever actually killed anyone outside the knife fight.

Hospital Hottie: Anna. She's nowhere near as in-your-face as many of the examples listed, but she is still played by Naomi Watts◊.

If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten: Nikolai is implied to have done a variety of nasty things to get where he is. Once it's revealed he's a Reverse Mole all of his actions in the film such as disposing of a body and sleeping with a Sex Slave are suddenly shown to have been in this trope all along.

I've Come Too Far: Nikolai's attitude towards what he's done to get where he is now. Though it's revealed that he's actually a good guy who's sacrificed too much to quit now, as opposed to a villain who can't go back.

Knife Fight: One of the most brutally realistic in the history of film.

Law of Inverse Fertility: Tatiana was a 14-year-old virgin getting raped by an old man - presumably just once - and they even gave her morning-after pills. Still, she gives birth to a baby and dies.

The Mafiya: This is one of the few good looks at the Russian mob in Western cinema. And in an amusing instance, Mortenson's outfit and cosmetic aids were so authentic that one day at lunch, he realized he'd unintentionally freaked out a Russian immigrant couple who took him for a real gangster. He had to introduce himself and explain the film to set them at ease. This was helped by Russian being one European language that Mortenson can't speak.

Pet the Dog: In addition to Nikolai helping Anna, there's Kirill crying and apologizing to the baby, when he was supposed to kill her.

Police Are Useless: They don't play a major part in the film, but while the officer played by Donald Sumpter seems competent, they do make a horrendous mistake (see Too Dumb to Live). It's questionable whether the undercover Nikolai counts as "police" or not, but if he does, he sure as hell isn't useless.

Racist Grandma: Or Uncle, as the case may be. Anna's mother also lets her own racism slip out, though more subtly than Stepan; while Stepan is proclaiming that Anna's ex-boyfriend left because black men always run away, Anna's mother defends him by saying "He was a doctor, Stepan" before Anna angrily stops her going any further.

Red Herring: At first it appears that Kirill is the antagonist of the film, the rapist of Tatiana and a generally dangerous wild card who causes problems for protagonist Nikolai and Reasonable Authority Figure Semyon. This reverses entirely when we learn that Semyon was the actual rapist, and Nikolai is actually an undercover cop trying to bring Semyon down. At this point Semyon emerges as the real villain, and Kirill's unreliability actually becomes an asset to the protagonists.

The Reveal: Nikolai wants to stay in the gang and become the boss. He got the star tattoos because he wanted to.

Reverse Mole: Nikolai. Not explicitly stated until late in the film, but there are several hints: The prostitute he had sex with being snatched by the police, the letter the detective finds on Soyka's body and his interest in the diary.

Slashed Throat: A particularly graphic example about two-minutes into the film, in which the assailant uses a razor to saw through the victim's neck. There is a somewhat cleaner example later, used against the aforementioned assailant.

Tattooed Crook: Operates as a Chekhov's Gun for Nikolai. It says something that while taking a break from filming by kicking back at a bar, Viggo Mortensen accidentally scared several Russian immigrants into thinking he really was a member of the Vory V Zakone.

Three-Month-Old Newborn: Averted. We see the baby immediately after she's been removed from her dying mother, and she can hardly be called "cute"; she's motionless, skinny and her skin's virtually grey and covered in slime and blood. We also see the umbilical cord, (which looks like crumpled plastic tube with stains of brown gunk,) being sealed off and tied.

Too Dumb to Live: Anna in the scene where she, all alone, goes to the Russian mob HQ to broadcast the incriminating information she has on the boss, antagonizing the notoriously aggressive and unstable Kirill. The police are also bloody idiots for openly taking the blood of an experienced criminal like Semyon and not thinking that he might work out what they were hoping to do and strike against the baby first.

Wham Line: In the end his father came down. It was the father who raped me. And depending on exactly when it clicks that Nikolei is undercover, any part of his conversation with the senior officer will count.

Would Hurt a Child: Semyon would, Kirill won't, or at least spends so much time agonising over it that he ends up not having to go through with it. Even though Kirill was willing to hurt the 14-year old Tatiana, the fact that he was incapable of actually raping her despite trying to could be interpreted as some vestige of this, or it could simply be that his probable homosexuality or constant drunkenness was the problem, and he didn't actually consider a 14 year old to still be a child.

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